Abstract

Objective: Telomere shortening has been observed in many human diseases, including atherosclerosis, cancer, aging syndromes, Alzheimer disease and vascular dementia. The present study aimed to investigate the mean telomere lengths of patients with schizophrenia.

Methods: We analyzed the lengths of telomeric DNA, comparing 2 groups of patients with schizophrenia (34 good responders and 34 poor responders). A control group of 76 healthy volunteers was also included. Blood samples were obtained, and telomere length was measured by Southern blot analysis on the mean length of terminal restriction fragment (TRF).

Results: Compared with the control group, a significant amount of telomere shortening was found in peripheral blood leukocytes from patients with schizophrenia who experienced poor response to antipsychotics (p < 0.001).
Conclusion: Shortened telomere length in chronic schizophrenia may be a trait marker caused by oxidative stress, and the ensuing cellular dysfunction may be a factor contributing to the progressive deterioration in treatment-resistant schizophrenia.

Contributors: Drs. Yu and Cho contributed equally to the work. Drs. Yu and Cho designed the study. Dr. Yu acquired the data, which Drs. Chang, Lin and Cho analyzed. Drs. Yu, Lin and Cho wrote the article, which Drs. Chang and Cho reviewed. All authors gave final approval for publication.

Acknowledgements: Thanks to Dr. Hay-Yan Jack Wang for critical reading and editing and to Mr. Chien-Ming Chen for computer art work for figures.